


After

by Jester85



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 13:52:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16766422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jester85/pseuds/Jester85
Summary: Arthur and Eames get a drink in the wake of the Inception job.No actual smut, sorry.





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Been on an Arthur/Eames kick lately. I actually just rewatched the movie, because sometimes I don't think either myself or others get Arthur quite right.

When Arthur wordlessly slides into the booth across from him, Eames raises his eyebrows in mild shock. Try as he might, he's never gotten the impression the point man had anything more than thinly-veiled disdain for his very existence.

"Hey," Arthur greets curtly, as if that explains anything. The rumpled Englishman sits back and observes the young American through heavy-lidded eyes, the sharpness of his suit and his gelled slicked-back hair seemingly aimed at making him look more mature, belied by his stuck-out ears, his surprisingly deep voice and the cool formality of his demeanor.

_Stick in the mud,_ he thinks dully, mind working a little sluggishly, as if still in slowed-down dreamtime, though he'd been sharp and alert there, they'd all had to be, none more than poor Arthur. He's not prepared to withdraw that uncharitable remark, though the events of the second level, wherein the point man he'd dismissed as having no imagination had managed to drop all of them in zero gravity while fighting off Fischer's militarized projection, had at least forced him into a reassessment of Arthur's ability to think on his feet.

Alas, he still had no basis on which to judge Arthur's ability to think _off_ his feet, and wasn't that tragic? He idly eyed Arthur's prim, upright posture and lean, elegant body, and opined that Arthur in the sack was either hopelessly uptight and reticent---perhaps even a virgin, poor thing---or else an insatiable sex fiend. There was no in between with those buttoned-down, repressed types.

When he'd first encountered the preternaturally serious young American, he'd leered at him in delight, thinking it'd be a wickedly delectable challenge to find out. It was only gradually he'd faced the distinct possibility that Arthur might actually be a robot.

Which makes Arthur just sliding into his booth in a shitty airport bar so intriguingly incongruous. They should all be scattering to the four winds by now, an unspoken rule Eames had expected Arthur of all people to follow at the earliest possible opportunity, and even if the point man intended to linger, he hadn't thought it'd be in a cheap dive bar, let alone with him.

But then Arthur just orders a beer and casually takes a long pull on his bottle, and it's such a reassuringly human gesture that it emboldens Eames to actually speak instead of observing in silence like a wildlife documentarian attempting to not spook whatever notoriously wary, elusive animal has just inexplicably wandered into his midst. 

"So how can I be of service, darling?" he drawls around his own bottle.

Arthur doesn't quite smile, but he isn't glowering either, and by Arthur's standards, Eames counts that as something of a win. "Maybe I just really wanted a drink," the American shoots back in his voice that's somehow always deeper than Eames expects it to be. There's a faintly long-suffering note in there, but Eames can't quite discern whether it's more about Arthur inexplicably placing himself in Eames' presence, or at the way he's spent the past however many months following Dom bloody Cobb around the world and back again like some faithful little greasy-haired puppy.

"I'd have taken you for a wine drinker," Eames finally offers, feeling a bit lame but not knowing precisely what else to say in this strange situation. He and Arthur just sitting across a booth from each other in a bar, post-job, seemingly for the utter random fuck of it, is messing with his mind a little, and he's already spent the forty-five minutes off the plane trying to stop fidgeting with the poker chip in his pocket and shrug off the phantom chill of snowy woods, fortresses collapsing into fiery oblivion sounding the death knell of Fischer-Morrow, the mannerisms of an old man. He both does and doesn't want to face a mirror, unable to entirely shake the irrational lingering fear that he'll see Peter Browning's face looking back at him.

Arthur is smiling at him in sardonic amusement, eyebrows raised, and it still looks faintly condescending but not unfriendly. "Should I have asked if they had any Manischewitz, maybe?" he asks dryly, and Eames feels a little shivery tingle run through him at Arthur casually implying Jewish heritage. It's a silly, random thing of no particular relevance to him, but Arthur has been such a bloody blank slate all the time he's known him, refusing to divulge the tiniest tidbit of personal information, that it gives Eames an inordinate thrill.

In fact, his burst of childish glee is enough to overtake his caution. "Why are you here, Arthur?"

Arthur gives him a long, lingering look that Eames can't quite decipher. It's almost as if the point man is sizing _him_ up, getting a reading on _him,_ and the sense of tables slightly turned and Arthur giving a rather Eamesian look right back at him is slightly unsettling. 

It also slightly makes Eames' skin tingle.

"I just clawed my way back up to reality out of two layers of dreams and the hardest job of my life," Arthur finally concedes. His tone is as carefully blank as ever, but there's something flickering around in his eyes, veiled, elusive. It's not quite vulnerability, but it might stray closer than Eames has ever seen there before. You have to apply Arthurian standards for these sorts of things. "I just sent the man I've been following around the world for the last two years of my life back to his family, and I---"

Now Arthur does glance pointedly down at the table, fiddling idly with his bottle. When he glances back up, there's a tightness around his eyes. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to do now."

Eames takes another long pull on his bottle, because he's too sober for Arthur of all people pouring his cold little heart out to him, and tells himself the dim bar lighting is playing tricks and he's only imagining Arthur's dark gaze is following the swallow in his throat, or the way Arthur's own mouth opens slightly. "I'd imagine the job offers will be pouring in soon, now that we've pulled off the impossible. You were brilliant, pet," he adds, because he's run out of reasons not to, and continuing to pull the pigtails of the man who may have saved the bloody lot of them from Limbo just seems cruel, even for him.

Arthur smiles, reserved but a little softer, a little warmer than Eames is used to. "You weren't so bad yourself," he offers slowly, almost as if sounding each word out, unfamiliar and strange on his tongue, and now Eames blinks, because Arthur is regarding him softly, still smiling faintly, and....is Arthur _flirting_ with him?

"A compliment!" he crows in mock shock, making a show of pulling out his poker chip and fiddling it about, flashing a crooked-toothed grin when Arthur rolls his eyes without his smile entirely disappearing. "Arthur, dear, are you certain I'm not still dreaming?"

And then Arthur is leaning back and _chuckling,_ eyes crinkled at the corners and showing dimples. Eames is fascinated. "You're impossible," Arthur grouses, but it's not at all annoyed and more than a little fond. "Eames, why do you think I'm here?"

"I assumed you'd already gotten another job lined up and wanted to continue to work with the best," Eames shoots back cockily.

Arthur's smile slips, and he looks more vulnerable, more _human_ than Eames has ever seen him. He also looks tired, and young, and world-weary, all at once.

"I'm not a robot, Eames," he sighs, and there's a weary sad tinge to his tone, as if he's disappointed this needs spelled out but yearns to be recognized as a human being anyway,

"I need a break." He takes another long pull on his beer, as if steeling himself for something. "And if....if you're not adverse to....not being alone, I.....I wouldn't object to it either....."

" _Arthur,_ " Eames drawls slowly, rolling his tongue over the syllables, savoring it like a delicious lollipop, "Are you asking me out on a _date_ _?_ "

He's still half-teasing, half-disbelieving, even now, but then Arthur finds the tabletop very interesting, and his big ears are turning pink, and oh, _oh._

"You know," Eames says slowly, consideringly, "I may still have a safe house around here somewhere."

Arthur gives him a look he's never given Eames before, up through his eyelashes, flirtatious, inviting, yet also almost shy. Eames feels warm and tingly all over.

"Take me to bed, Mr. Eames," Arthur says in a remarkably cool voice, and Eames almost has to shut his eyes against the rather embarrassingly maidenly swoon that sweeps through him. Leave it to Arthur to say the most scorching things in a tone that suggests a report on a mark's bank records.

"And here I took you for no imagination," he laments, picking up his jacket and slapping some bills down.

And then _Arthur_ leers at _him_ and, gaze dark and steady, and whispers, "I think I might have some ideas."

As Eames ambles out into the blinding LA sun with Arthur gliding along closely at his side, and casts a fairly desperate glance for the nearest available cab, he is finally forced to admit to himself that sometimes it's worth being wrong, after all.

-FIN-


End file.
